


Change is the Constant

by Black_Betty



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Ableism, Ableist Language, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, High School Reunion, Letters, Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-08
Updated: 2013-12-08
Packaged: 2018-01-04 00:21:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1074810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Black_Betty/pseuds/Black_Betty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik and Charles knew each other in high school, might have even called themselves friends. At their ten year high school reunion, Erik realizes how much has changed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Change is the Constant

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yahtzee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yahtzee/gifts).



> Yahtzee, I started writing a fill for one of your other prompts, which very quickly spiralled out of control. When it became apparent that I wasn't going to be able to finish it by the deadline, I swapped it for something else (all of your prompts were gorgeous and inspiring of course :D), and it's only right now as I'm about to post that I reread the prompt and realized with horror how far left I slid of the original request. In your secret mutant letter you seemed pretty open to deviations, so I hope this is alright. You deserve so much more, of course. You have brought so much joy and real happiness to my world with your writing, I humbly hope this gives you some in return. Happy Holidays darling <33333
> 
> (for people concerned about the ableism tag, please check the end note for further details!)

 

It’s amazing how the places that seemed endless and huge as a child and can haunt nightmares are surprisingly small and innocuous when returned to in the harsh light of adulthood.

As he stands in the hallway of the tall brick building that served as his high school ten years previous, he wonders how he was ever scared of such ugly tiled floors, such small lockers.

“Erik!” Charles calls, waving at him through the crowd. He suppresses a sigh and heads over, hopes Charles hasn’t found another old acquaintance to force Erik upon.

Thankfully, Charles is alone when he maneuvers through the crowd to his side. He’s gazing up at a glass case full of old photographs, and he taps his finger over one, leaving a smudged fingerprint over a familiar face.

“It’s me!” he says, smiling up at Erik. Of course Erik recognizes him; Charles looks essentially the same. Ten years hasn’t diminished the bright colour of his eyes, the red of his mouth. His cheeks are as smooth and baby faced as they always were. Charles’ hair in the photo is a bit longer than it is now, and the boy in the photo grins through his bangs, holding up a medal looped around his neck in one hand.

It’s a snapshot from the year Charles went all state in track and field, right after he won gold in the relay. He stands with his teammates, their arms draped around each other in a way that makes Erik suppress a pang of jealousy. Instead he grins at Charles, asks if he’s still got the tiny shorts seventeen-year-old Charles is wearing. Charles smirks at him and replies,

“Only if you pull out your Hamlet tights," and Erik remembers the school play in a sudden swoop of embarrassment, realizes with a visceral jolt of fear that photos of the show might surface at some point during the night.

He's distracted when the doors to the gym open and the crowd starts moving inside in a churning wave. Erik steps away from the glass and Charles follows him, but not before Erik catches a glimpse of his expression as he takes one more look at the old picture.

When he sees Erik waiting for him he says, “Shall we?” with a smile, and slowly wheels himself along with the flow of the crowd, leaving Erik to trail after him.

It seems to take them ages to get inside the gym, which is crammed full of chairs and round tables, decorated with streamers and balloons in black and red. When they finally push over the threshold Erik realizes it’s because Shelly Anderson is behind a table stacked with nametags, making small talk with every person who squeezes through the door.

“Oh,” she says when she sees him. He’s not sure what to make of the way she glances over him, her eyes frightened but very obviously checking him out. “Um, Erik Lehnsherr, right?” She fumbles for his nametag and hands it to him, pulling on a smile. Shelly always was too nice for her own good. “We didn’t think you’d be coming…” Her face falls as though she’s said something terrible, and Erik watches her squirm until Charles pokes him hard in the side to move him out of the way and says, apologetically,

“I dragged him along I’m afraid, sorry about his manners.” Shelly’s eyes light up when she’s sees him, and Erik remembers in a flash how all the girls panted over Charles when they were in school together. But as quickly as her excitement arrives, it flees, and her expression creases into something familiar that makes Erik’s skin crawl and itch.

“Oh Charles,” she says mournfully, her voice softening as though she’s speaking with a particularly dull child, “Oh I was so sorry to hear about what happened…”

“Thank you,” Charles says, smiles and holds his hand out for his nametag. Erik wonders, not for the first time, how Charles hasn’t been canonized for sainthood yet. Shelly hands Charles his nametag, chewing at her lip, while Erik crumples his up and tosses it back onto the table.

“Where the bar?” He asks and Shelly gestures vaguely behind them with one hand, watching them go with wide eyes.

They wind through the crowd and around the tables that have been shoved out of the space meant for dancing, which is currently crowded with clusters of people making awkward small talk. Erik spots their table and breathes a sigh of relief when he sees it’s located conveniently close to the alcohol.

There are people sitting down when they get there, a couple Erik vaguely recognizes though Charles, of course, knows them all by name. There’s an awkward moment when Charles realizes the tables are pushed so close to each other he can’t get his wheelchair around to his where his place card is, and everyone stands in a frantic accommodating fumble to trade seats with him.

One of them can’t stop apologizing for the mix up, and Charles smiles and says something banal and self-deprecating to calm them down. Erik is barely paying attention, the urge to drink so strong he only has eyes for the bartender with his shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, the bottle of vodka in his hands calling to Erik like a lighthouse beacon.

“Why don’t you get us a drink, darling?” Charles asks, and hides a laugh at what must be a look of pure desperate gratitude on Erik's face. Erik stands just in time to bump into Alexandra Brown who sways on heels that are too tall, hugs him in a sure sign of intoxication and then collapses in his vacated chair to grab at Charles’ hand, shouting about how much she’s missed him.

Erik makes a run for it, gets to the bar and breathes a sigh of relief as the bartender hands him a glass of vodka tonic with a knowing smile. He downs it gratefully and then asks the man for a beer, savouring the first mouthful this time. He’s reluctant to leave the bar when heading back to their table means making small talk with people he cares very little about.

To his left a large projection screen flickers to life and begins a slow show of photos from their graduating class. Erik watches with horror as his own face flashes up on the screen, the class photo Shaw had made him take for the benefit of CPS. In it, his eyes glare at the camera through a veil of lank hair, his mouth stubbornly closed and frowning.

“Awful, isn’t it?”

He turns to see Karen Thompson leaning against the bar next to him, grinning her Cheshire cat smile, “It’s like some circle of hell, being forced to relive high school like this.”

He grins at her and lets her hug him. Karen had been Gertrude to his Hamlet in the dreaded senior play, and was one of the only people he had been able to tolerate aside from Charles. Even then, Charles hadn’t really been his friend until after graduation.

Karen looks good. She’s filled out in a way that makes her look more like a woman than a girl, her hair cut short in a way that flatters the long line of her neck. He tells her so, and she raises an eyebrow,

“Flattery Lehnsherr? What happened to you?” He shrugs, but he’s well aware of what happened to him. Has a hard time not looking over at Charles and giving himself away. Karen orders a glass of wine and regales him with her life story in the succinct, dry way he always appreciated, college and then traveling, eventually teaching drama at a local elementary school.

She asks him if he’s seeing anyone in a way that implies she’s hoping he’s not. When he inadvertently blushes and says he is, she teases him mercilessly and he realizes that he regrets losing touch with her over the years. He wishes for a moment that he had tried harder to keep in touch, regardless of how eager he was to get out of Westchester and across the country, to never look back.

The on-going slideshow next to them changes slides and an image of Charles clicks into focus. He’s standing on stage at some assembly, smiling as he speaks into a microphone, one hand running through his hair. Karen suddenly sobers.

“It’s too bad about Charles though,” she murmurs, gazing up at the larger than life image in saturated colours.

Erik turns and looks reflexively at Charles who is sitting at their table, grinning over a glass of water at Alexandra who gestures elaborately. His mouth is red and wet, his cheeks flushed. He looks gorgeous and happy, life ripping through his veins in a way that is almost visible and Erik loves.

He turns back to Karen.

“What do you mean?”

She leans a little closer to him, mouth pulled into a little frown, her fingers tightening on her wine glass.

“It’s just…it’s such a shame. He was an amazing guy. He should have been…more. More than what happened to him. It’s too bad.”

He understands what she means. He does. He knows Charles sometimes mourns, not so much what he lost, but of the potential future that had been snatched away from him. Running and dancing and scrambling up the stone steps of the university. A life without chronic pain and constant struggle. A life where the day-to-day problems he has now would be completely unknown and unthinkable.

But also knows Charles is more than the sum of one tragic accident and a wheelchair. Charles is more than his good looks, his skinny legs. He’s more than his gigantic intellect and the obnoxious way he thinks he’s right about everything.

Erik remembers hearing about Charles accident through a post on facebook of all horrible things. He remembers calling Charles’ sister and asking to speak with him the week after he got out of surgery, even though he hadn’t spoken to him in three years except for the odd email here and there, mostly initiated by Charles who didn’t seem to realize they were an ocean and worlds apart. He still doesn’t know what possessed him to call, only knows he was glad he did when Charles breathed raggedly on the phone and told Erik in a broken, distant voice that he wasn’t sure he could do it. That he didn’t know how he could possibly survive.

Something about the anonymity of the phone pulled the confession from him, Erik expects, a way for Charles to hide his face and let everything go. It was that same anonymity that prompted Erik to say to him, “I don’t know how to help you, but I will sit here and I will listen to you. And if you don’t want to talk, write me a letter Xavier. It’s lonely out here on the west coast.”

Erik remembers the letters Charles sent him while in the hospital, and after when he was in therapy, letters full of hate and a tangled rage poured out on paper without punctuation, pen seeping ink through the pages with the force of a heavy, angry hand. He remembers letters where Charles seemed hopeless, where he was bitter, where he told Erik that he hated him for being so far away, hated Raven for pushing him and for treating him like he was a child. That he hated himself, hated his weakness and his body that seemed beyond his control.

He also remembers that Charles somehow, amidst therapy and endless surgeries and the letters of pain and anger and a desperate yearning, got his PhD in Genetics. Wrote his thesis and presented it to his colleagues, rolled across the wooden stage at Oxford University and smiled as though he was totally at ease, though Erik could see his hands shaking. He remembers because he was there, flying across the ocean to see Charles for the first time in years, to see that everything had changed, and yet, Charles was still Charles. Was still beautiful and amazing and infuriating and still the most accomplished person he’d ever met.

But the people here, the people who knew Charles in high school as something young and seemingly flawless, they can only see the changes and they can’t understand that Charles has lost nothing of who he is. That Charles is still better than all of them. He can see in their faces that they mourn Charles as though the boy who ran all state in track, who was class valedictorian and the treasurer of the student council had died in that car accident in England. As though the Charles who sits in the room with them is irreparably damaged and broken. And Erik can’t stand it a moment longer.

“If you feel bad for him than you’re an idiot,” he snaps, and it’s the wrong thing to say from the way Karen’s face falls open in affronted shock, but Erik has suddenly remembered why he dislikes people so much. He’s not going to spare anyone’s feelings now. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. You think you're better than _Charles_?”

Karen looks horrified and she sputters, “No, no of course not, but…it’s just, it’s really sad, that’s all.”

Erik sneers at her, grips his beer so tightly he thinks the glass might crack.

“Sad? Sad, like he’s some charity case. Like he’s someone who needs your pity? Can’t you see him?” He gestures over at Charles and Karen glances around, not at Charles, but to see if anyone else is noticing Erik’s outburst. He doesn’t give one fuck if anyone is listening.

“He’s the youngest professor at Columbia. He went to Oxford and finished his undergrad in two years. He gives his fucking money away to anyone who asks and he’s done more with his life than you could ever hope to.” He’d love to tell her about how great Charles is in bed, how his arms and shoulders are broad and thick and can pin Erik down, his chest and stomach pure muscle. How he gives great head with his gorgeous mouth and how he makes Erik laugh, even when he’s completely out of his mind in pleasure. But that’s for Charles and him and no one else.

Karen looks a little pale, but she swallows and scowls at him.

“Listen, I didn’t mean anything by it, okay? God, you’re still such a dick Lehnsherr.” She grabs her wine and hurries off into the crowd, squeezing past the thick press of bodies around the dance floor.

Erik tries to breathe, drinks the rest of his beer before slamming it down on the bar. He heads over to their table and reaches out his hand to Charles when he gets there. Charles smiles up at him reflexively, but a shadow falls across his face when he sees Erik’s thundercloud expression. Before he can say anything, Erik demands,

“Dance with me?” Charles’ eyes widen in surprise and Alexandra, who is still sitting at the table sliding further into red faced intoxication makes a shocked sound, says, “Jesus Lehnsherr,” as though she can’t believe how insensitive he’s being. Erik feels his knuckles crack as he clenches his hands and he’s ready for another tirade when Charles cuts him off, smiles at her and says, “I know, can you believe it? Erik, you know you can’t dance.”

It’s so ridiculous in light of everything, and so _Charles_ that it makes something in Erik ease, a tension loosening in his chest. Charles is right, he can’t dance, but it’s the only thing he can think of right now that will allow him to be close to Charles aside from climbing into his lap. Charles reaches out and grabs his hand, his face creased into concern.

Erik’s saved from answering any questions as somebody steps up to the microphone and begins rattling off a long-winded welcome speech. He sits when Charles tugs at him, lets Charles soothe him with the gentle stroke of his fingers across his palm as one speech drags on into another.

He’s nearly calm again, or as close as he’s going to get, when Donald Jenkins clears his throat into the microphone and says with a palpable sense of melodrama,

“Just one last thing: there’s someone special with us tonight, and I was hoping we could recognize him for a minute.” Charles’ hand tightens around his and Erik thinks, _oh no. No_. “I think I speak for everyone when I say how wonderful it is that Charles Xavier is here with us again after so long. Charles buddy,” and here he tears up a bit, “we’re so blessed. You’re so brave. You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met.” He gestures with his glass, spilling a bit of wine over the rim and everyone in the room raises a toast with him.

“To Charles,” he concludes, and everyone bursts into applause.

 _If this was a film_ , Erik thinks, _this is where there would be a dramatic swell of music_. Instead there is only Charles, his face bright red but his smile gracious as he acknowledges Donald and everyone else with an awkward wave. Only Erik can feel the steel grip of his fingers. Only Erik can hear when Charles leans in after the applause dies down and the music starts again, and whispers,

“I’m ready to go, if you are?”

 

 

Later that night when they’re lying in bed together, Erik running his fingers slowly up and down the ladder of Charles’ ribs charting the rise and fall of each breath, Charles asks,

“Do you ever miss him?”

He always does this. He waits until they hidden beneath blankets and the cover of darkness to ask Erik real questions, and to give voice to honest thoughts. Erik knows what he means, but he still asks,

“Who?”

Charles sighs, the rush of air running across Erik’s chest and making him shiver.

“The seventeen year old Charles. The one who wore impossibly tiny shorts and ran track and had a great ass.” He says it dryly and with the familiar crack of humor that Erik loves, but Erik knows the intention behind it. Understands what he’s really asking.

“I didn’t really know that Charles,” he says after a beat of thoughtful silence “but no. I don’t miss him.” He rakes his fingers through Charles’ hair. “I can’t miss him. He never went anywhere, he just…grew up.” He thinks about his own picture from the yearbook, scowling and unhappy, impatient to be away from everyone, to be alone. He always thought that’s what he wanted: solitude, isolation.

There’s something painful about looking at the person you used to be and realizing how much has changed. It measures the space and time in a quantifiable way, in years and wrinkles, in paychecks and moving boxes, in the before and after of relationships. But Erik barely feels any pain, only an immense wellspring of happiness to be here in this bed, holding this man. To know him better than he knows himself.

He thinks about the box in the closet full of letters, creased and aging and falling apart. Thinks about the first time he saw Charles after they both moved to New York, the way Charles made him eat a hot dog from a vendor so they could share their first “authentic” experience as New Yorkers. Thinks about the way Charles had wiped ketchup from his lip and smiled at him like a hand unfolding.

He thinks about the ugly and cold child he used to be, hating himself, hating everything, even, at times, hating the beautiful boy who seemed to have the world on a string, and who wanted nothing more than to be his friend. He thinks that if he could speak to the Erik who had his head down and was doing everything to survive the twelfth grade he’d grab him and tell him, you’re right to hate everyone, and the world can be a terrible place. But he’d also say:

 Just wait. You don’t even know what’s coming.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to represent in this fic not an outright and directly offensive attitude to someone with a disability, but rather, the way that people are unable to deal with change, especially a drastic change in someone's life and in the way they are presented to the world. A lot of this comes from the experiences of people I know with disabilities who can sometimes be hurt not by hateful words, but by the ways in which people try and pretend everything is normal, or by their sorrow or pity or inherent lack of understanding. The ways in which their disability becomes the only thing people can see.
> 
> Of course, Charles' experience here is not meant to encapsulate the experience of everyone with his disability. It is only meant to be representative of his own experience....
> 
> Whew! Okay! That was long and rambling, but if you made it to this point, I hope you enjoy the fic!


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